Why Liberal Christians Annoy Me

Liberal Christians seem so benign. They hold many of the same political points of view as I do. To one degree or another they also support a secular society. Unlike the conservative Christian or even worse the radicalized Christian, the liberal Christian is less strident, more open minded, less dogmatic and more accepting of other belief systems. Do they do less harm than the more militant fellow Christian soldiers? I contend that in some ways they actually contribute much harm to the progressive movement and equality for all. In fact, Christians of all types slow down steady progress in that direction.

Why?

Because their struggle to cling to superstition, to find a way to meet all religions somewhere in the middle, even to reform traditional religions can't succeed because they are unwilling to admit that the very scriptures that they hold dear, the very book that sits on the stand beside their beds perpetrates inequality to women, abuse of children, racism, violence as means to resolve conflict and a patriarchal world view. The Bible is brimming with statements and decrees that have kept women, for example, under the domination of men. If we want to question why the western world is struggling with violence toward women and inequality, we need look no further than our Biblical roots.

When you have verses in the Bible recommending that women should be in subjection to their husbands, that children should be beaten for disrespecting their parents, that war should be waged because there is a chosen race and many other toxic ideologies, a reformed Christian must spend a lot of time explaining why these toxic threads throughout the Bible meant something other than what is written. And they do.

Liberal Christians are forced to find explanations for why god said one thing but meant another.

In their quest to keep the Bible central to their walk with god as well as pertinent to modern societies, they must resort to claims that the scriptures are metaphorical and other convoluted explanations for why such vile things as slavery or stoning of wayward women are suggested as acceptable behavior. We now know that these are inhumane statements but apparently their god didn't know it at the time. No, wait a minute, their god did know, because he's all knowing but he isn't particularly clever when it comes to the written word. His metaphors sucked. If I were to use any of these cruel statements as a slogan for a business, for example, I'd have a law suit slapped on me so quickly, it would make my head spin.

And, then there's the idea of a new dispensation. Supposedly the New Testament ushered in a new age of love over law. Jesus was hipper than his dad. Of course, the fact that god flipped his point of view really can be confusing. Ignoring an entire collection of inspired writing, the biggest bit of the Bible was no longer completely pertinent to our lives. These new age changes made god look like a regular Joe Blow with a bad business plan, however. Something just doesn't jive.

Why can't liberal Christians retire the Bible?

Put it where it belongs in the dusty trash bins of outdated mythologies? Because they're still superstitious. They still want or need to believe in a god that is somehow involved personally in the lives of humans even though there is absolutely no evidence whatsoever to support this longing. They still fear that if they call the Bible what it is, an outdated, ignorant text that was always filled with lies and poor information, they'll be punished in the next life. So they try as much as possible to ignore these horrible passages in the Bible even while they fight for women's right, gay rights and equality for all. Even when they champion science and new knowledge about why things are the way they are, they cling to a book that is so anti-science as to be no better than the fairy tales we were told as children about witches who eat little kids and monsters that hold young girls captive until they agree to marry them.

Liberal Christians bug me to no end.

They've taken an old story, given it a new title and then kept their fingers crossed that nobody will notice the details. They are helping to perpetuate ignorance. They replace real solutions with the call to prayer and true inspiration with the reading of scriptures that deny our ability as a species to rely on rational thought and our creative natures to solve problems. Ultimately, they are holding back progress. One day, future generations are going to look back on their silly explanations and see liberal Christians for who they really were all along, sad examples of our ignorant past who helped to prolong a lot of unnecessary pain and suffering for mankind.

I'm a myth buster. My recent published book - Have We Been Screwed? Trading Freedom for Fairy Tales - can be purchased on Amazon.

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That's got to be one of the LAMEST and STUPIDEST statements it is possible to make. It essentially means that one person's belief in something is not necessarily the same as someone else's belief In What Is Supposedly THE SAME THING!!! As though one person believed in Ohm's Law as V=IR, but someone else had to slip another variable in there for whatever reason, even though Ohm's Law is utterly and absolutely demonstrable AS IS.

And therein lies the problem: Their God Is NOT Demonstrable, and because there is no referent to tie down the object of belief, the definition of that object can wander all over the map. That said, there should be no surprise whatsoever that definitions of gods and religions seemingly go on forever, rather than being hard and fast.

Another point I would raise is that liberal Christians think that their religion is a good thing. The reality is that if their religion is a good thing then not having the religion is a bad thing. By what means can something be said to be good unless there is a standard of measure with respect to which it can be good? In this case, the standard would have to be people without the religion at hand. So, being religious is inherently prejudicial against atheists. I don't like this fact, but it is the reality.

The Kalam Cosmological Argument also fails in that it does not / cannot account for the possibility of a spontaneous event. If Uranium 235 can decay into Barium and Krypton (and two neutrons) with no external stimulus, why couldn't the singularity which gave rise to the Big Bang have a similar inherent instability, resulting in self-causation?

Ad to this the complicated Klam argument that comes in to play simply to give the universe a "first cause." Then they admit their god is the cause but their god actually had no first cause.

It's all a waste of time and I no longer want to hear the arguments. What is going to make the belief valid? NOTHING. Is my non-belief valid? It's totally valid as long as we find no evidence to the contrary. You have to have evidence for valid beliefs.

Loren, we agree. I have finally determined that the bible and Quran are dirty books of horror. Both books normalize and defend the worst of humanity, racism, slavery, sexism, cruelty to children, coercion, torture, fear, bondage, warmongering, it's all in the holy books. Anyone in the 21st century who still claims the bible is the basis of their value system whether metaphorical or literal are accomplices of evil. They may not realize it because they're seriously indoctrinated my centuries of this harmful ideology but the fact that they will spend hours debating the issue, years trying to present a case of justification for these hateful books makes it pretty clear that they are part of the problem. They're holding us back.

Something which does not exist cannot help us, but chronic dependence on something which fails to exist does active harm to all of us.-- me

For all their complaints to the contrary and all their apologetic efforts, not one believer has ever positively demonstrated the existence of their deity. All their efforts have done is to WASTE TIME that could have been better spent in activities which are demonstrably productive. And indeed, that time is precious, because it is limited. There are no afterlife, no encores, and no do-overs. Emphatically saying, "NO!" to these people is utterly appropriate, because their actions reflect one of the best definitions of insanity I have ever heard:

Doing the same thing over and over again, expecting different results.

People plead in the defense of old, evil, outdated ideas all the time.

They say: If we keep trying, we can make it work. It just requires a little more tweaking and patience.

I say: No Just no. We gotta scrap those old outdated, dangerous ideas completely. We've been trying to find a way to redefine a bad thing for too long. We know more now. it's time to move toward the light, true enlightenment. Scientific discoveries, knowledge, empathy, humanistic values, taking responsibility for our children's future is the LIGHT at the end of the tunnel. That's our ONLY hope.

I actually don't mind Liberal Xtians so much because I find that I can have a semi-rational conversation with them unlike their fundie counterparts. This can result in a great exchange of ideas sometimes leading to a challenge that might end up changing either one of our minds - true growth and wisdom ensues! Mind you, this has happened only once or twice in the many years that I have been discussing religion/world view/philosophy/science with xtians but the rarity of those moments makes them all the more precious.

As my own children tell me "don't muck things up for me. I know you do not believe in god any longer but I still believe in my own way."

That is the problem with the world at large. Everyone believes in god in their own way. Why not give it up? Look at all the problems this has caused mankind. This is confusion. Their own holy book says that god is not the author of confusion. Wake up people.

My sentiments exactly, Loren. They are dangerous because they stand with one foot in each world. They can't fully commit to the secular world but also won't take a firm position on the god question either. You can't depend on them to have your back when engaged in the very real struggles that we encounter from those who detest secularism because you never fully know their position. They swing both ways.